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    "But Sir"
    "But Sir"
    "But Sir"
    Ebook182 pages3 hours

    "But Sir"

    By Merv McRae

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    About this ebook

    Merv was brought up as one of 14 children. His father was a farmer, and for most of his life, Merv was a farmer. He volunteered to join the army during the second World War, and was sent to Singapore. When a decision was made that Singapore could not hold against the Japanese, the Allied Forces were ordered to surrender. It could not have been realised at the time just how barbaric the Japanese were to be in the treatment of their prisoners.
    "I will never forget the utter despair of the young men of F Force, nor the way they died quietly and without fuss. Neither will I ever forget the cruelty of the Japs, nor will I ever forgive them for their total disregard for the lives of the P.O.W.s and the dark races who also worked on the railway."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMerv McRae
    Release dateJun 16, 2014
    ISBN9781310039720
    "But Sir"
    Author

    Merv McRae

    This is the page for Mervyn Alexander McRae, Australian, born 27th November, 1914, died 2nd July, 1997.He published two books, both now very difficult to obtain. They are important history, which is why they are now to be republished as new editions.

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      Book preview

      "But Sir" - Merv McRae

      But Sir

      The Autobiography of a Twentieth Century Australian

      Merv McRae

      Copyright Merv McRae, 1986.

      This Smashwords edition published by Samray Books, 2014

      Samray Books can be contacted at ma_mcrae@bigpond.com

      ISBN: 9781310039720

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      First published by the author, Merv McRae, 1986

      with ISBN 1 86252 052 5.

      This book is dedicated to the parents, wives, and families of all Prisoners of War, who suffered along with us, and who had the added burden of most of the time not knowing whether we still existed.

      The poem below was given to me on a hospital ship whilst on my way home from Malaya after the war ended. I since realise that although this was an historic march, the most tragic of all was the Borneo march, where only six survived from a force of several thousand men.'

      The Greatest March of All.

      You may have seen this title

      About some other march so grand

      But they were just a picnic

      To the one across Thailand.

      It started dawn at Changi

      In rice trucks by rail

      For six days thro’ Malaya

      Then at Banpong starts the tale.

      The first three nights were not too bad

      Along a main road grand

      Then into swamps and jungle

      Went our intrepid band.

      There were three thousand A.I.F.

      Three hundred British too

      The good old British lion

      The old Aussie kangaroo.

      In parties of six hundred

      We set out each night

      To march about eighteen mile

      The prospect wasn’t bright.

      Feet soon were blistered raw and sore

      Treatment hard to get

      But the order ever onward

      Ever onward yet.

      The food we got was none too good

      And what there was not nice

      Two meals of dried radish

      With each a plate of rice.

      We left the swamp behind us

      Then into jungles of bamboo

      Poisonous snakes and scorpions

      And many tigers too.

      Then we hit the mountains

      The road was pretty steep

      The climbing it was bloody hard

      Enough to make you weep.

      But on and on we battled

      Getting thin and gaunt

      When we get relieved from here

      This trek our dreams will haunt.

      Men dropped by the roadside

      Exhausted, tired and sick

      Unable to go another step

      They played their final trick.

      Hospitals were crowded

      With weary footsore men

      Dysentery took heavy toll

      Cholera broke out then.

      Now the march is over

      After two hundred weary miles

      Men worked on road and railway

      Or maybe driving piles.

      So when this war is over

      And you hear of marches grand

      Just dip your lid to the legions

      Who tramped across Thailand.

      Think of the men who paid the price

      And rest in that far off land

      We’ve gone through blood and battle

      But died at disease’s hand.

      But the reaper swung a heavy scythe

      Upon that Thailand trail

      With grisly bone he danced a jig

      Told many a ghastly tale.

      So we who were upon it

      And saw the toll he took

      Will sneer when we read of glory

      In some great History book.

      We stood and saw pals buried

      Struck down in all their prime

      Then staggered on another lap

      In that God forsaken climb.

      Although not killed in action

      They were heroes all

      At Reveille and Retreat

      Their memories recall.

      Tho’ you preach to us of glory

      And tell us deeds so grand

      Excuse us if we scorn you

      For we marched across Thailand.

      So when the price you tally

      For God’s sake see it’s high

      For the death of our marching comrades

      Was a horrible one to die.

      And when the talks of marches

      And some hard trek recall

      Just remember the unsung heroes

      Of the greatest march of all.

      (by an unknown author.)

      Preface:

      I have not sought the consent of any person included in this book, be they dead or alive. Everything in this book is factual, as far as my memory serves. I, and I alone, am responsible for all opinions expressed herein.

      My heartfelt thanks go to my wife Alison and my son Peter, who have both given me Larry Dooley about my spelling and grammar. They have been my live Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary, as well as my inspiration, advisors, and censors. Alison can also cook.

      It is seventy years since I began this life; I intend here to record the highlights of that life, both the humour and the rough times of those seventy years. I feel we in this twentieth century have had the best of an age.

      Now I fear for the next century, the way things have been developing, the greed for the dollar to satisfy the needs of people for drugs, all the latest things in electronics, the diseases which hadn’t been heard of in the past. I can only foresee a deterioration in the quality of life, unless all people from the top to the bottom in pecking order combine to fight the crime and the drugs. I can’t see a promising future unless this is done; the young also must help, to improve the future quality of life.

      Merv. McRae.

      Mortlake, Victoria, 1985.

      Chapter 1

      Pedigree

      All my ancestors came from farming families. Mother’s people, the Marchments, came from England somewhere, in the 1850s or thereabouts, and travelled to Stuart Mill, in the North Central district of Victoria. Then it would be my grandfather who selected land at Swanwater, in the same area. It was some of the best wheat-growing land I have ever seen, and they prospered there, as well as having about ten children. One day, Grandfather ran to catch a train, overdid his heart’s capacity, and died of heart failure at the early age of forty-five. The farm was left to too many brothers, who had wives who outdid each other in spending capacity. Woodlake, as the farm was known, had to be sold; the Marchment girls were upset about this for years after.

      One of the girls, Aunty Amy, married and went to Western Australia. When Aunty came from the west to visit, she would get together with her sisters, Sophie, Louise, Ginny and Ellen. Off they would go to stomp around Woodlake for an afternoon of pure nostalgia.

      Our Mum, Sophie Marchment, married Alexander John Duncan McRae in about 1907. Judging by a photograph, she was a pretty girl, about five feet three inches tall. After she and Dad were married, they moved to what was to become Loch Lomond.

      Mum would have been a sweet girl, always one to get her stubborn up. Dad promised her she would never have to soil her hands. She told Dad she wasn’t going to have any children; she had a sense of humour, and so did mother nature; it was she that landed Mum with fourteen healthy kids, and not one of them planned. I don’t think she ever regretted having any one of us after we were born. She used to say babies bring their own love. We probably all caused her heartache at times. There has never been a parent who hasn’t had to worry about their offspring, and never been a parent who was not willing to help them if it was at all possible.

      My father’s people came from North West Scotland. Dad used to stir Mum by saying to her, of us kids, You have some of the bad blood in you, your mother was an Englishwoman. Mum never ceased to get wild about this; Dad was proud to be a Scot. His branch of the McRaes came from the Kintail country, near the Isle of Skye, and are connections of the McRaes who own Eilean Donan Castle to this day.

      Donald McRae, in his book Clan McRae,' referred to the scattered children of Kintail," and to the mass migrations away from Scotland to America, Canada and Australia, which took place in the nineteenth century. We have met McRaes from one branch which settled in Canada, and now own a lumber business in which they float lumber down river to the mills in the traditional manner.

      My Grandfather was a boy of fifteen when his family landed in Australia. They selected land in the North Central district of Victoria, near St. Arnaud; it was known as Oakbank. They were a large family, but Grandfather died at the age of forty-five, which left Dad and the two older sisters to carry on the farm work. Jessie, the oldest, married Tom Trower, and went to select land at Manangatang in the Mallee. They had three children before Tom died at an early age, leaving Jessie to carry on the farm. She did so in appalling conditions, living in a humpy which could scarcely be called a house, until 1938, when she got a better house.

      Aunt Maggie married and went to Underbool, in the western Mallee. She lived in nothing more than a bag shelter, and had five children there. It was years before she got something better. Things were tough in those days. The young of today wouldn’t believe the conditions these people endured, nor would they be interested, and yet people were more or less content, just as people are more or less content in this age.

      Dad, I gather, wasn’t very popular when he bought some land next to Oakbank and called it Loch Lomond. Dad’s brothers and sisters were getting older by then. Dad would have been the mainstay at Oakbank, and would be missed as the manager.

      Dad was always a big man, over six feet, and would be more or less seventeen stone, never much less. Mum brought the height of their progeny down a bit, as she was a foot shorter than Dad; none of their sons would be six feet tall. Apart from his large family, Dad built his farm up to two thousand acres. He went through the depression with a huge debt to worry about, but did not go under the debt adjustment scheme which was used at that time. The grocers, Lorrimores, had enough faith in him to carry us through, as well as putting a bag of boiled lollies in with the groceries every Thursday. Dad certainly had his worries over those years, and yet would try to take us on a holiday to the beach every year, (a project similar to an army operation.) It is not until one is older that one realises the sterling qualities of one’s parents.

      Dad died at the age of sixty-three in 1946, of heart failure after an operation on his prostate. Now most of his sons have had that operation with gay abandon, and are all OK after it, even if their pride is a little dented. I believe technology has come a long way in forty years.

      Chapter 2

      Some of the Hazards

      I was born in November 1914. I don’t remember much about the first World War, as I would be just under four years old at its end. I did have one experience which terrified me. We were at the local hall; I guess there were returned men there celebrating the end of the war. They had rifles and were marching round and round the hall, firing what I suppose were blanks. About all that I would have heard from adults which would have left an impression on me would be about war. I was certain that war had arrived and we would all be shot. On this occasion they also gave out bags of lollies. Another early memory was that I was in a crushing crowd; I saw thousands of legs, and became very frightened until Dad put me on his shoulder.

      I started school when I was just four, and well remember the slates, and the smell of blackboards and chalk. I also remember a time I was the centre of attention for a couple of hours. We climbed, of course, over and about everything; this time it was the wagon and shaft. I slid down to the waist, and hadn’t a hope of getting out. The other kids gathered around and tried to pull me out the way I had slid down, but all to no avail. We were all becoming rather alarmed, so the others went and got Old Uncle Jack. He was always old to us, but would be about forty-five at that time, certainly no more than fifty. He tried to pull me straight up, the same as the kids had been trying to do. He also put a box under my feet so that I could push too, but this tactic also proved unsuccessful, so we gave up until Dad was brought. Dad saw immediately what was necessary. They had to take the shafts off the wagon, by pulling out a six foot pin which held the shafts on; that took some doing, but it did the trick and out I got, not the worse for wear, but maybe a bit stretched from the earlier efforts.

      Brother Tom, who is one year younger than me, stole the limelight in my first year of school. We arrived home from school one day to find Tom had put his hand through the cogs of the chaff-cutter. This was a shock to our parents and to the whole family; Dad hadn’t known Tom was there until he heard a yelp. It would have been over in a second. The injury was to his right hand, which had gone through the cogs diagonally. His little finger is there, but twisted, the next two are missing, and there is about a joint and a half missing from the index finger, so he is left with his thumb and two thirds of his index finger. There were no telephones in those days, so it had to be a fast trip in a buggy to the doctor and hospital. These days the fingers could be sewn back on if they are not too damaged, and the operation stands a fair chance of success.

      Our only transport at that time was horse and buggy. We rarely went to St. Arnaud, but when we did we loved it, with the clip clop of the horses’ shod hooves on the asphalt. Later on we could read all the many hoardings that we saw along the road as we got in to the town; Velvet soap, Pears soap (which had a skinny old man saying fifty years ago I used Pears soap, since then I have used no other.) Robur tea, Beechams pills in a little wooden box, Plume Motor Spirit, Shell, with the same shell emblem it has today; all these were exciting to us. But the steam trains we could see from Aunty Ginny’s front gate were always the tops; we were always fascinated with the trains and their whistles.

      As kids there were enough of us to make our own fun, and we would play for hours with building blocks that Dad made, or with an old pram wheel, to push along in front of us. Those were the days when kids were to be seen and not heard, whereas nowadays they expect to be the centre of attention, and to be entertained.

      As little kids, about three of us decided to leave home and live in St. Arnaud, which was about ten miles away. I was one of these potential city-dwellers, and probably in charge. We were going to stop at Aunty Ginny’s, which I fully expected would be just over the next rise. We got about two miles from home along the road, when someone took us back home. I don’t even remember getting into trouble for this escapade, we must have been young.

      In those early days conditions were quite primitive for Mum. On washing days the copper had to be boiled for the washing, and water had to be brought by buckets from the shed-tanks about four chains away. I can still remember Mum carrying two four-gallon buckets from the shed-tanks; eventually the water was piped over. Mum had hired help a lot of the time in those early years, and she needed it, as she had another baby most years.

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